Slice Zombies for Kinect

Cost
$9.99
Format
Digital
Size
211.84 MB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed]

Release Date
5/8/15
Developer
MADE
Publisher
MADE
Modes
Single Player

Slice Zombies is a Kinect only game developed and published by Made for the Xbox ONE. Think Fruit Ninja and replace the fruit with zombies and you know what Slice Zombie is all about.

Slice Zombies contains one game mode. You have to survive 1:10 slicing zombies, zombie hands and coins while avoiding bombs. You start with 3 lives and you lose one for every bomb you slice or zombie you miss. Zombie hands give a point bonus when sliced and the coins are used to buy power-ups you gain access to while you level up. You can change basic things like the background or the trail of your slicing. There are also actually helpful powerups like an extra life or activating new zombie hands to slice that do everything from spawning more coins to healing back a lost life. There are quite a few things to unlock in the game’s 21 levels of play and you almost level up too fast. It seems after every other game there is a new zombie or something else to buy and you unlock things a lot faster than you are going to earn the coins you need to buy them.

The art is comical and highly detailed and Slice Zombie’s music has a nice carnival type theme to it. There are quite a few different zombies you will be hacking at with several different launch patterns which adds some nice variety to the game. Later in the game you unlock stunt zombies that float up on balloon to pop. There is a fat zombies that you can earn extra points by hitting multiple times. Getting to the 1:10 mark is not a simple task in the beginning. There are typically a LOT of bombs on the screen at once and it takes some getting used to to start learning the varies patterns you are going to see. As you level up you’ll unlock permanent powerups like starting with an Extra Life and things like high value coins.

Since it’s a single player game you need to get pretty close to the Kinect for you to be able to cover the whole screen. The game does a good job of giving you a straight down the middle line to base yourself on before every game and the tracking of your hands is above average. Issues arose in navigating the menus. It’s seems to be on a whole different tracking scheme. A quick email to the developer and MADE let me know I needed to hold my hand still and kind of off to the side and it would typically pop up for control pretty quick. Most Kinect games you can utilize the controller in menus which frankly with how Kinect works as a whole is a option I ALWAYS use but for Slice Zombie the controller is only good for dashboarding. MADE also pointed out that you can use the Xbox voice controls for “xbox play” and “xbox back”.

I usually don’t talk too much about achievements in a game because that’s a narrower target audience and I try to play games that I will like, not games I can 1000. But for those of you who are achievement hunters Slice Zombie is a very good price to time invested ratio. The full 1000 is easily obtainable in a single day and the list is mostly slice this many hands or heads. The longest achievement is for

Including a tutorial on Kinect tracking for Slice Zombies would of really helped the learning curve but once I figured out the secret to getting tracked properly I never had another issue. I’ll be honest that I’d hoped there would be more than one game mode to play and some form of multiplayer, be it at the same time or a back and forth mode to spice up the offering. Slice Zombies has all the guts of a nice, fun little Kinect game but it falls short do the lacking of any real long term playability.

• FINAL VERDICT

Wolfenstein: Old Blood

Cost
$19.99
Format
Digital
Size
37.14 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed], PS4

Release Date
5/5/15
Developer
MachineGames
Publisher
Bethesda
Modes
Single Player

Let’s start this off with a simple question and answer session. Did you play New Order? If YES, then, Did you love it? If YES, open store.microsoft.com and buy Old Blood. If you were any type of fan of New Order than Old Blood is going to be right up your alley. Like all the way up your alley. Old Blood has all the glorious guts of New Order with some extra amazing things jammed in there. I know what you are saying person who loved New Order, where oh where did they find room to cram more goodness? MachineGames seems to be masters of cramming goodness because they found space.

New Double Shotties

So if you did play New Order than story wise Old Blood is a prequel and will fill in the time right because the reboot started. If you didn’t play New Order than this is going to take you right into the main story with a much easier to swallow $20 price tag. The campaign is 8 full missions broken down into 2 sections with a quick prologue to get you going. It’s a good 4 to 7 hours and you can definitely stretch that out even further if you really explore every nock and cranny. If you’re going to play it on the “Can I play Daddy?” (Easy) then yes you can blast through it even faster but you are really doing yourself a disservice doing so.

One of the questions I thought right when I saw Old Blood is should this of been DLC for New Order and I would say no. If you look at the length of what people are putting out DLC wise for the price, this being on $20 is an amazing deal in my opinion on MachineGames part. To me Old Blood does not have $5 tacked on to be a full release. This is well worth $20 and making it standalone creates a much cheaper entry into this rebooted Wolfenstein franchise.

Speaking of the Wolfenstein franchise we now have the entire Episode 1 of the original classic. One floor per level. There are big improvements to the Nightmare system (which is what they call entering these Wolf 3D levels mid-game) because now you can leave at any time and you are allowed to re-enter whenever you want. The let down for me is that these are perfectly recreated with all the secrets and loot but there is no scoring system. So I can pick up all the Old Silver I want but it has no meaning inside the game. It would of been nice to see the old final scoreboard along with a leaderboard. They took the idea 95 yards but just didn’t quite put it in the end zone.

Wolf 3D Nightmare Level

CHECK OUT OUR FULL GUDE TO THE NIGHTMARE LEVELS ON YOUTUBE HERE

One of the best gameplay features of the new Wolfenstein franchise is the fact that they have stealth and combat options but you are never penalized for the choices you make. There are no auto-lose forced stealth sections that seem to be all the rage nowawday. The game does start on a weird stealth section with huge hulking Nazis attached to powerlines. And although you can power these guys down by sneaking around and shutting off the control terminals one at a time there is nothing stopping you from just taking down one and then using its heavy machine gun and just going to town on the rest.

Stealthing it up with double silenced pistols

The graphics are definitely next gen. The enemies look great and there was next to no clipping problems. The story is your typical shooter story. It’s mostly present at the end and start of levels but there are a few critical scene that play out in game engine during your playthrough. The voice acting is amazing. The shooting is limb removing, head blowing up crazy action. The stealth takedown system only includes a few different animations but you can exectute it with mulitple weapons.

Along with the main campaign there is a series of challenges which are re-creations of battles from the campaign that unlock as you as you finish them in the main story. These are scored and have their own leaderboards. You can select any of the main difficulties but you are restricted as to how high you can score if you play on the easier settings. It’s a nice addition to give it a little more replayability.

Old Blood takes New Order and just adds to overall package. MachineGames is doing some amazing things with a classic franchise and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

• FINAL VERDICT

State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition

Cost
$29.99
Format
Digital
Size
3.91 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed]

Release Date
4/28/15
Developer
Undead Labs
Publisher
Microsoft
Modes
Single Player

State of Decay is a 3rd Person Zombie Survival game developed by Undead Labs and published by Microsoft. It was first released on the 360 in 2013 and this re-release on the ONE adds both DLCs and some next gen improvements which include the typical visual upgrades (draw distance has been greatly improved), a new character, and weapon add-ons.

This game is more than just basic individual survival. You are in charge of a whole group of survivors. You pick where the group will live. You decide between updating the medical facilities versus creating more beds for survivors. You send them out on mini missions to gather supplies and you are constantly working to make sure the base is secure from zombie attacks.

These decisions are huge in the opening part of the game where you are just trying to maintain order and keep people alive. As things progress, and you provide better weapons and facilities, the base tends to run itself pretty well. By the end game I just completely ignored all requests. Oh no, Billy is sad? Well its the zombie apocalypse so let’s just man up Billy. Oh you think you might want to leave my heavily guarded base with its top notch medical equipment and comfy beds to go sleep in an abandoned gas station? Don’t let our nice protective fence hit you in the butt on your way out.

Setting up a new base

This complete lack of empathy on my part for Billy’s cry baby attitude isn’t the game’s fault. It’s actually the opposite. If I hadn’t worked my hard creating this zombie free oasis then I’d be a slave to every little request or risk losing it all. But I built something nice in a sea of despair so I have a lot of leeway in my choices now and Billy can man up or get out.

On the zombie realism scale State of Decay is firmly on the realistic side. You know, for a game involving zombies. You won’t be taking your double ended chainsaw into a sea of 600 zombies and coming out on top. In State of Decay you’re going to be taking your Wooden Table Leg at 2 zombies and even then you’ll be worried. If it turns into a pack and I made some bad decisions regarding transportation and weapon selection well then I might just be dead. And in State of Decay death is permanent. That character you spent hours getting to top level. DEAD. No reload save, he’s just dead. Time to move on to another character. You are allowed to switch between survivors but I’ve always preferred to have one super amazing zombie destroyer character than 3 or 4 average joes. So keeping that one amazing guy alive is priority number one.

Survivor 1 – Zombie 0

In order to promote you using a larger selection of characters, as you use your main guy for an extended length of time he will start to get tired. He’ll temporarily lose Stamina. And let me tell you, Stamina is everything in State of Decay. It determines how far you can run and how many swings of that Wooden Table Leg you get before you’ll just be standing there gasping for air while zombies eat your face. When your character gets tired you have a few options; drugs will give you a temp boost to keep you going, you can switch to another survivor or as I like to do, it’s time to take a break. The game continues even when you are not playing. People will still go out looking for supplies, things continue without you. Your characters will heal, your vehicles will get repaired (as long as you have Parking Spots and a Workshop that is). I’ve never had anyone killed or leave while I wasn’t playing but it is a possibility.

There is a overall story. It’s not the best but it’s definitely serviceable. There are a few intertwining story lines. Different groups of survivors that you need to help or ignore. The army is in there doing things too, some good, some bad. The story just seems incomplete though. For example there is a story line with a guy who says he can get things and do things and you help him once and then there just isn’t anything more to it. It just peters out. There are a group of survivors that are definitely the bad guys. That story line just kind of ends also. If you decide they are evil your only option is to just ignore them. There’s no way to retaliate or really get any closure. The voice acting is top notch and what there is of story is put together very well it’s just that they could of done so much more.

My biggest issue with State of Decay is that in the 2 years since it’s launch on the 360 they don’t seem to have fixed a whole lot. The worst offenders are the fact that your car will launch about 100 feet into the air if you even touch a small rock, which in turn sends you on a orbit that closely resembles that of a small satellite. This series of tragic events seems to always land me in some small crevice that my buff survivor has no way of getting out of. He can wall climb a cliff that is 3 feet taller than him but a small incline is just pure death. You lack any real calf definition apparently. Poor workout decisions.

Vehicles aka the best weapon

When I was nearing the end of the game you open up a new area. I wasn’t in the mood to move the whole clan over so I found a nice truck and loaded it with supplies (adding vehicle storage was one of the ONE improvements), took a few hits but I loaded up for a long winter. Saw a helicopter with some supplies and the coast looked clear so I drove near AND BAM caught permanently under a helicopter propeller. Dashboard and try again.

The other main distraction is the fun little game of hide and seek I seem to always be playing with the last zed in an area. They are worse than rats as they worm their way into the geometry of the house and just sit there hissing at me mocking my inability to hit them in the face with my Fire Axe. This didn’t show up very often, but when it did my most successful option was to dashboard and come back and try again.

The DLC consists of a completely separate campaign (Lifeline) which is about half the size of the main game putting it at like 5 hours or so. And then there is Breakdown. Breakdown is Groundhog Day for Zombies. You work through challenges and getting survivors to a RV and then PFFT! you are right back where you started only the difficulty ramps up.

Overall State of Decay is a great game where the pluses far outweigh the minuses. The simming aspect of creating and maintaining the base adds a lot of interesting choices and the perma-death scare keeps you on your toes. I’m not a stacker type of player so if you’ve played the 360 version I don’t think there is enough new and changed to warrant the price tag unless State of Decay is one of your top games of all time and if that’s the case you probably aren’t bothering to read this review, you’re playing State of Decay right now.

• FINAL VERDICT

Funk of Titans

Cost
$12.49
Format
Digital
Size
1.71 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed]

Release Date
1/9/2015
Developer
A Crowd of Monsters
Publisher
A Crowd of Monsters
Modes
Single Player

Funk of Titans tells the story of Perseus, son of Zeus, and his quest to retake the heavens in the name of Funk music. Yes, Perseus’ epic quest is to take back the heavens from the likes of Pop, Rap and Rock so that the god’s funkiness can rise again. I don’t know if this is pre- or post- Medusa as the game is pretty light on “story” but I can assure you that Perseus is up for the task. Funk of Titans is a platformer with the gameplay mechanic where your character is always being pushed forward. There is some directional play but for the most part your job is to either Jump or Swing your weapon. Everyone seems to be going hardcore with platformers today; 1001 Spikes, Volgarr, it’s nice to have a game that makes it’s mark with fun rather than frustrating memorization and twitch responses. Funk of Titans is fairly forgiving with a kind of “I know you really meant to jump 1 second later, so you made it!” feel. The question is did they dumb it down too much?

Each level has 3 gold awards you can earn. One for taking no damage, one for getting all 100 vinyls in the level and one for getting the Pegasus Idol. Once you succeed at one it’s permanently completed so you can do these one at a time, but once you get a feel for the game getting all 3 at once will be the norm. The game does introduce a few new wrinkles in each world with updated puzzles and mechanics. The 100 vinyls is a perfect run and although a few will be found in large jars (in fact every jar has a vinyl so always destroy every single one of them) the most important thing is to always look for the vinyls to show you where to head next. If you come to a choice and one path has a lovely bouquet of roses and the other is a shear cliff covered in poison tipped spikes but the cliff has a vinyl; then just jump, that’s the correct way to go.

When you get a Pegasus Idol in a level, and complete the level, you are taken to a bonus stage for a chance to get some extra vinyls. This bonus level is the closest you will probably ever come to playing Flappy Bird on the ONE. There is only one level that you will play again and again and again but at least the order you take on obstacles is randomly generated. You are pretty much playing Flappy Bird in this bizarre combination of Ipod Nanos and food items. I am to this day baffled by the level design. I get iPods are music but am I missing some Funk connection with cupcakes and french fries? For me this was a huge letdown. This section is about the only part of the game that takes any real skill and the biggest reward is more vinyls, which you will be swimming in in no time. There is no option to skip these Pegasus levels so by world 2 I was just letting Perseus plummet to his death as fast as I could to get on with the actual game.

There are three worlds; Pop, Rap and Rock. Each of these have two boss battles. These are some of the easiest QTE (Quick Time Events) you have ever played. It’s actually one of the biggest disappointments in the game. The first in each world is a mid-boss grunt. You have three rounds of simply pressing the four buttons as they come up. Easy. The final boss of each level, a Titan, is the same exact QTE only the boss goes first and you have to beat their score. You would have to go out of your way to lose any of these battles. The Grunt battles are 100% exactly the same in each world. Same animations, everything. In fact the entire game has only 3 enemies. A guy with a pointy hat (kill), a guy with a round hat (jump on his head most of the time) and the round hat guy behind a spiked chariot (always jump). For 40+ levels. The design of the levels themselves is superb with some of the pathing and timing being a thing of beauty.

These battles highlight one of the downfalls of the game which is the sound. They developed a game around a battle between Funk and other music genres and the background music is just generic. At the very least I was expecting a little funk vs pop/rap/rock music for the boss battles. There is always the argument that you get what you pay for on indie titles but when you base your story on music, it’s nice to have the music at least match the levels.

All those vinyls you are collecting are the game’s currency. There is a large store with different weapons and helmets covering all kinds of pop culture references from Star Wars to Friday the 13th. A nice touch is these items are used in the in-game challenges and also are required to open up magic doors protecting some of the more rare Pegasus Idols.

Funk of Titan plays very smooth and the mechanics behind the game are very solid. The problem is you are going to get distracted from this by pointless and subpar boss battles and a flappy bird clone that seemed misplaced and tacked on. I would of preferred they either had dropped the Pegasus angle all together or make the rewards for playing that level more appealing.

• FINAL VERDICT

Never Alone

Cost
$14.99
Format
Digital
Size
2.8 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed]

Release Date
11/28/2014
Developer
Upper One Games
Publisher
E-Line Media
Modes
Singleplayer and Couch Co-op

Never Alone is a 2D side scrolling adventure game from Upper One Games and E-Line Media. It tells the tale of Nuna, a Inapiaq, as she braves the Alaskan frontier to save her village. She is joined in this adventure by a companion Fox. The two characters are either controlled back and forth by a single player or by a second controller in couch co-op. Yes, it’s another digital title that doesn’t support Live. It really makes me want to question Xbox and just how hard is it to hook into Live.

Never Alone is a gorgeous game. The characters and the backdrops are some of the most detailed and vibrant I’ve seen on the ONE. The wind looks likes its cold and biting, the environment looks harsh. The details in Nuna and the fox both from a character design aspect and also in their movements is simply top notch. As they run and climb and move through the world it is easy to immerse yourself in the story.

The story is told, narrator style, by a Inapiaq and is based on a real folk story handed down generation to generation. As you complete levels you unlock these amazing cultural insights that are mini documentaries that further explore the lives of the Inapiaq. These cultural insights represent the collectibles in the game. There are 24 total and probably 21 of them are given to you as you follow the story. You would really have to go out of your way to miss 90% of them. There are about 3 that are just off the main path, but truly these 3 are in about the only other non-main path areas you can go. If you see a ledge or rope that is not on the main path, chances are that’s a collectible area. The cutscenes are told in native scrimshaw and look just as good as the rest of the game.

The problems start to arise in that a game is not just pretty pictures. You need an actual game to play and Never Alone is a very basic adventure game at its core. Nuna runs around and climbs things and uses her bola to destroy ice and to activate spirits, while the fox is able to reveal and manipulate hidden animal spirits to create and move platforms for Nuna to use.

The most interesting part of the game, the interaction between the fox and Nuna, is marred in that it seems they never knew whether to make a single player game or a co-op and ended up with something that doesn’t really work for either. As a single player game you really are only playing one character in that you do something with Nuna, switch to the fox, and then do something else and then switch back. There is nothing that requires both characters to do anything at the same time. The puzzles were a lot easier in co-op but overall co-op was unfortunately a fairly boring experience. Player A does something then Player B then there is more running. No coordination is really needed. The second half of the story has an interesting twist, that is great story wise, but makes playing the fox particularly boring from this point on. A good co-op game requires both players to work together, where Never Alone would probably play out exactly the same if it was played by a single person using two controllers.

There was a section with a moving crate witch shows some of the basic flaws of this 2 character system. Nuna had to control the crate and both Nuna and the fox needed to reach a high ledge. So I had to have Nuna hold the crate while the fox made the jump, then while I was getting the crate back into position for Nuna to jump, the fox AI would repeatedly jump back down ruining the entire sequence and forcing me to restart. The companion AI is really just set to follow mode. They will do any basic jump but anything requiring a real button press you need to switch over to do yourself. Most of the puzzles were artificially harder because the AI wouldn’t hold where you needed them to or they lagged so far behind your movement they got crushed by just not keeping up.

My entire playthrough of the game, with loading and deaths, was just under 3 hours. I hate trying to create a subjective coloration between cost and time played but 3 hours is a short game. And 3 hours for $15 is definitely on the high end of the current market. There is no NewGame+ here, no try to beat a par time, no reason to replay period really. I finished the game, watched the cultural insights (if you are a achievement hunter there is a achievement for finding and watching them all. I can confirm you can start each one and back out if you want to but they are really well made.) and then I was done with Never Alone with no hook or desire to return.

It’s not a bad game. There are no glaring flaws or errors or glitches (The fox did get caught in the environment one time) it’s just that there is no wow factor either. Nothing that grips me and says this is something that adventure games have been missing and here it is now. The game is gorgeous and the story is well told but for me it seems like they made a good documentary and then shoved a Max: Curse of the Brotherhood clone into it.

• FINAL VERDICT

Sunset Overdrive

Cost
$59.99
Format
Digital and Disc
Size
23.17 GB
Available On
Xbox ONE [Reviewed]

Release Date
10/28/2014
Developer
Insomniac Games
Publisher
Microsoft Studios
Modes
Single and Multiplayer

The year is 2027 and a new energy drink called Overdrive has turned the citizens of Sunset City into crazed mutants. The game plays out as a action packed 3rd person shooter with crazy movement. You grind on rails and bounce off of tree tops and skim over the water. The game is based on moving fast equals staying alive. You not only have to contend with the mutant hordes but also scabs, human criminals who are using the mutant scare to try to take over the city for themselves. There’s a mutant apocalypse coming can’t we all just get along?

The story is extremely funny and heavily self-aware. In one of the early missions you get a status update from a NPC back at the base and the NPC with you asks how you are communicating with the base. Your character scolds them for questioning something that is there just to move the story along. The general plot of the story is you are trying to escape Sunset City so you can tell the world what Fizzle Co is up to. In a welcome twist to the evil corporation trying to take over the world standard, here it was just a sad accident that the drink is destroying Sunset City. There was no malicious intent here, mutants don’t carry a lot of pocket change and make many energy drink purchases so it’s detrimental to the bottom line all this mutant business. But since it did unfortunately happen, Fizzle Co is also not really interested in taking the fall for it either.

The campaign is not particularly long and consists of 27 main missions that can be done in less than 7 hours time. So if you are a Point A to Point B and only play a game’s campaign type of player then the content level is certainly lacking. But if you are a Open World player of the highest of caliber and love the search for Side Missions and various Challenges then that time will more than double. Challenges consist of speed traveling, killing things in certain way and a ton of other stuff. Lots of variety. Add in an insane number of Collectibles and there is quite a bit to do in Sunset Overdrive.

Traversing the city is very smooth. Moving from grinding a rail to bouncing off some building awnings to hanging from some power lines is quick and smooth. My one issue with movement is there is a system of poles you can swing around to get a speed boost that almost never ever ever with my character grab them. They really are not needed but a lot of them have hanging collectibles and the range and perfection you need to grab these is a little insane. But that really is the only issue I had with movement. Sunset Overdrive really nailed the movement, from being able to reverse to changing from top riding or bottom hanging positions based on if you are trying to dodge incoming fire.

Combat in Sunset Overdrive is 3rd person shooter with a auto-aim system. You can manually aim if you want but you are typically grinding so fast that manual aiming is an exercise in futility. The game is based on speed so use it to your advantage. There are a ton of crazy guns to find and buy. Ranging for TNT Teddy Bear launchers to bowling ball launchers to flaming shotguns. As you use each weapon you can level it up for more damage and more ammo up to level 5. Leveling up your gun is just stage 1. On top of the weapons you are also working towards getting AMPs. AMPs are bought by getting the collectibles in the game and do things like add fire damage or stun damage all the way up to each time you jump on a bounce area the whole area below that is a mini bomb. These things get crazy fast and they have levels also. But that’s not all. You also can earn badges for grinding and getting kills with weapon types. These badges are combined to form Overdrives. Overdrive are bonuses like carry more single shot ammo or do more damage to this enemy type. You can really make your life a LOT easier by making sure to have the right AMP and Overdrive combo for the situation. If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the system there is a lot you can do, if you just want to get some bat crazy effects going then that is definitely an option also.

Collectibles. Normally I would rage against a game that sports over 600 collectibles but Sunset Drive does two things that tones my rage down quite a few notches. Firstly, you can buy maps for all the collectibles in game and see exactly where everything is making it a lot easier. Secondly they are not just achievement guide selling collectibles. You actually use these items in game to upgrade and make your AMPs so they have a purpose. 600 is still insane and it definitely will add quite a few hours to your gameplay of just nothing but running around the map but at least they just aren’t there to sell strategy guides.

The multiplayer is co-op with a competitive side. Although all 8 players are working towards the same goal, each player is scored individually. The missions are extremely varied from simple kill missions to item to retrieval to defense missions. There is a standard map voting at the end of each round and then you all run to the next part of the map for the next missions. The game can get quite crazy with 8 people shooting a million pyrotechnic guns in a small area but the game never showed any sign of slowing down or lag which was a welcome change from normal online play for most games. For a game that is so self-aware you need to actually activate mutliplayer (Chaos) from within the single player. So if you want to do some co-op you first have to load in the game and make your way to one of the Chaos portals. Nothing too crazy but an annoyance if all you want to do is get your multiplayer on.

I had, and am still having, a blast playing Sunset Overdrive. It’s definitely over the top in almost everything it does, which can be off-putting to some people, but I find it an amazing game. Once you get some of the higher end AMPs and the craziest of the crazy guns the game really takes off and looks just amazing with bright colors and over the top explosions. Insomniac has made one of the top games on Xbox ONE.

• FINAL VERDICT